You don’t comment on the other and bigger revelation, from which I conclude that you haven’t seen my second letter yet, though you’ll be able to figure out something of what it’s about from what I’ve said here. In any case I can tell you that I’ve done a lot of further research—Ram has taken me through the royal archives, which contain extremely elaborate records of every event in Athilantan history—and I have no doubt at all that the interstellar migration story is accurate. Ram and his people really do come from another world.
The Athilantans have been on Earth for 1143 years. Harinamur—the first one—was the captain of the space fleet that brought them here. The migration took them only thirty-one years, which means they must have traveled at the speed of light, or something pretty close to it. That implies a technology way beyond ours, at least so far as space travel goes, since we haven’t managed yet to reach speeds anything like that and we’re still limited to our own Solar System. For the time being, anyway.
Sixteen starships altogether made the trip. They don’t exist any more—they were dismantled and totally recycled into other things during the early years of the colony, when metals were scarce. When they landed here, they knew they were here to stay: they weren’t going to be journeying between the stars ever again.
It ought to be possible for the people up front to check all this out by running an astronomical survey. There can’t be many red stars within a 31-lightyear radius that have a history of instability, and maybe they can figure out which one of them went nova about 20,000 B.C. And then we’d know where Romany Star was. When we become capable of building spaceships fast enough to travel to other stars, which I guess is still another hundred years or so ahead for us, we can send an expedition out to look for the charred ruins of the civilization that once lived there, and confirm that whole thing.
On to other matters.
The Prince and I are getting along very well. He’s completely comfortable with the idea that we share the same body. As he goes through his day’s princely chores he keeps a running commentary going, explaining everything that he’s doing. I’ve learned vast amounts about the trade routes of the Athilantan empire, about its history, about its religion. I hope I can keep it all straight in my head until I get back to Home Era. (Damn not having any way to take notes back with us! But at least they did a good job of training us to use our memories.)
The Prince questions me, too, about Home Era. Our time is like a fantasy to him—a time when billions of people occupy the Earth and all sorts of different cultures exist— and his appetite for details about it is tremendous. He wants to know about city planning, about our arts and religions, about sports, about automobiles and airplanes, about almost anything. I think he suspects that I’m making up some or even all of what I tell him. There are moments it almost feels like that to me: Home Era seems terribly far away, terribly unreal. After these months here I sometimes think that only Athilan is real and everything else is a fairy tale. Having no body of your own will do that to you, I’ve heard.
A big event lies just ahead: the Rite of Anointing. Preparations are already in full swing and the whole city is involved in them.
You will recall that this is the third of the four major rites that a prince must undergo, following the Rite of Designation and the Rite of Joining, before he is ready to become Grand Darionis of Athilan. Apparently in this one the heir to the throne receives certain great revelations that every king must know. What these revelations might be, Ram has no idea. But the prospect of finally finding out has him terrifically excited.
Me too, I have to say.
It’s another few weeks, now. We’re both going to have a tough time waiting for the days to pass.
The one thing I’m afraid of now is that the folks back at Home Year are going to give me the hook just before the rite. That really upsets me; knowing that the clock is ticking all the time. And then I’ll never find out what the mysteries were.
How much more time here do I really have? That’s the big question. I don’t know. You remember in one of my first letters I told you that I had lost track of the count of Home Era days. The information you sent helped a little, but not enough. I may be as much as a week off in my count. On top of that, it’s unclear to me what the exact day when they’re supposed to pull me back is. “Six months,” they said, but do they mean that right down to the day, or is it just a rough figure? So I might have another two weeks here, a month, maybe even six weeks. I can’t tell. And I want to stay here as long as I can, Lora. For obvious reasons I’m not looking forward to going back there and facing the music. But aside from that I simply don’t want to leave. Not yet. Not until I’ve learned everything I can possibly learn about this place.And I have a feeling that the Rite of Anointing is going to tell me plenty.
Hope to hear from you soon.
With all my love—
—Roy
11.
Day 36, Golden Days, Great River.
Another long silence from me, I know. I was holding off, so I could describe the Rite of Anointing to you. Well, the Rite of Anointing has now taken place—it was three days ago. The mysteries have been revealed. It was a tremendous event—and also tremendously upsetting. A fantastic experience. Completely overwhelming, the kind of thing that takes absolute possession of you and won’t let go. Both Prince Ram and I were pretty badly shaken up by it all. And so I’ve needed a few days just to think about what happened, to come to terms with it, to understand my own reactions and feelings. I’m not sure I really have a handle on it even now.
Let me see—where should I start?
At the beginning, I guess. The morning of the day of the Rite of Anointing. It was one of those magnificent springlike Athilantan days, warm golden sunlight, clear crisp blue sky, that make the fact that we are actually living in the Ice Age seem like such a joke. (Every day is springtime in Athilan. Something like the best days California can do, but even lovelier.)
The Prince had fasted all the previous day, and had stayed awake all through the night, praying and chanting. We had no contact with each other. I took care to keep myself well below the threshold of his consciousness. Obviously he didn’t want to be disturbed, and I didn’t want to disturb him.
At dawn, his personal slaves led him to the great marble bath chamber of the palace, and bathed and anointed him with perfumes and oils. They dressed him then, in a magnificent robe of pure white cotton bordered in purple richly brocaded and trimmed with cloth of gold. From the bath chamber he went to a small, very austere chapel on the ground floor, where for a time he prayed in front of column of shining black stone.
Now his family came to him: first his sister Princess Rayna, then his younger brother Prince Caiminor, and then his mother, Queen Aliralin, whom I hadn’t encountered before. (A slender, stately, very queenly woman of great beauty. She had been on the north shore of the island, it seems, in a religious retreat.)
As they went before Prince Ram, each one knelt to him, even his mother, and with outstretched hands silently offered him a shallow cup of polished pink stone that contained a small quantity of some aromatic wine. He sipped very solemnly. One wine was ruby red, one was golden, one scarcely had any color at all. Each affected him in a slightly different way. The overall effect was not one of making him drunk—the wines of Athilan don’t seem to make anybody drunk—but nevertheless transforming his spirit, giving it a glow, a radiance, that it had not had before.